


praise

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: F/M, M/M, maybe she was a tyrant once, she was an emperor once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3545165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>IV and Rio still have things to work out.</p>
<p>Shark and Yuuma kind of pretend they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	praise

“You have a lot of good traits,” Rio tells Yuuma, when they all return again. Shark, next to her though, stiffens and drops his gaze to trace the curve of her smile with his eyes. Yuuma doesn’t notice at all, of course, and laughs and thanks her and is glad that they’ve all come home again. “I’m glad too.” Rio agrees.

She seats herself behind Shark on the motorcycle, clasps her own wrists as he revs the engine and takes off down the curving highway. (He is, too young to have a license, _really_ but of all the things they are both too young for, this is the smallest indiscretion).

Shark turns off the engine when they are halfway to the place where they sleep — when Rio is around, because when she isn’t Shark finds his own lodging and she can’t always been the one to drag him out, and drag him to a kind of home. “It’s all over, huh.” Shark says.

She wants to let go of him and stand up, straight and tall, on the back seat. The road curves ahead, but they’re no longer moving forward. It would disrupt him, though, her poor brother who had only just regained himself. Kamishiro “Shark” Ryouga, turns just enough to smile at her.

Rio smiles back, of course. “Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not letting you off so easily.”

“What do you mean?” His smile flicks into a frown, but it’s the look of a cranky older brother. She tosses her hair, settles herself against his back a little more securely.

“As if I’d forget how much you owe me,” Rio demands of him and by his snort of only half-exasperation, it reassures him.

“I don’t owe you jack,” but the engine comes to life again and the rest of the ride isn’t notable at all.

\+ + +

IV gets in her face, because neither of them go to school, now, and Shark does and _somehow_ he finds her on the roof of the clock tower that’s near the school and he doesn’t have anything to say, really.

But that’s how he is.

She doesn’t unwelcome him from her space either, doesn’t square her shoulders or betray the shift in her weight with a gesture. Rio stands like a bowstring, just waiting to be pulled back to shoot him.

“All this time and you haven’t even apologized,” she breathes it in between his words and then laughs. She lets herself laugh loud and cold and like Merag who was an _emperor_. “Don’t you owe my brother an apology?”

It stops IV in his tracks, just a little. It’s a small stumbling block for him, because all of his tripping only leads to grander gestures, often with his hands and his mouth. His jaw tenses, drops, teeth are shown bright and white and he reaches to drag his fingers through her hair. “Apologize? To _Ryouga_? Shouldn’t he have been grateful for my attentions to him? Hey, are you saying that you’re both feeling neglected by the great me? Come on, don’t reject my ultimate fanservice!”

He’s not quite fast enough — even when he realizes she’s moving and tries to jerk back.

Rio catches his wrist and steps forward, leading with her heel and her elbow. The air is forced from his lungs in the same movement that rolls him over her hip and she finishes the movement by resting the heel of her shoe against where his collarbone is. Even through his cream jacket and white shirt he can feel the small point.

“Service? You haven’t even come close to satisfying me.”

\+ + +

Yuuma still doesn’t get her name right. It’s like the endearing cycle of a bike wheel that’s been bent out of shape from love, always striking the ground in the same rhythm. Shark sis. Shark sis. Shark sis. Rio smiles at him, she pushes him a little with her words.

She tolerates him. And it isn’t as if she can’t agree that he has done great things. He has a lot of good traits.

It’s most noticeable, though, how Shark lingers after school, only to say he wasn’t waiting for Yuuma, of course. The way they bump shoulders — Yuuma jumping enthusiastically, more like a bodyslam, really, and Shark’s only half-way defensive curl.

(And Rio notices, of course, the way Shark’s hands will clench tightly. The degree of his smiles. The moment of regret and the moment where he sees again and again the choice he might have to make — the same one, as always — country, people, king or — . But part of coming home, again, is always trying to move forward).

\+ + +

He’s squatting, again. Rio finds him because of course she does because she _knows_ him. Shark is sitting among the broken boxes and bottles like he belongs there and she can only stand in the doorway and say: “And what’s this? Are you planning on leaving your cute little sister to fend for herself?”

That strikes him and he stumbles over his words and himself, “ What? No! Can’t you just leave me alone for a little while.” But then. “Just — I wouldn’t, you know that.” And. “I’m not going to mess this chance up.”

“You better not,” but she knows he’s vulnerable. He’s wearing that face he had on right after their parents (this lifetime’s) had died again and they were left looking in through the doorway of what used to be their home, “I’m here for you. I’ll do what others can’t.”

It’s really just a reminder that if the rest of the world turned against them, they would have each other. Or, if he made the same decisions, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, she would be there with him. One or the other, really.

\+ + +

It’s not an apology, but it’s an agreement.

Shark has his own way of thinking on things, of trying to remove himself and of trying to move forward. Rio, for all her versatility and for the prophet’s words that can tumble out of her mouth, is better at breaking down walls.

And, IV, sometimes shares expressions with her brother when he looks at her before he twists it around to grin and snarl and make a show of it. That’s why it works.

His back hits the stucco wall and his clothes catch and tear on it and they’re both thinking about the way it would sound (feel) if it had been his bare skin against it instead. IV catches both of her wrists, but that leaves him wide open for her to raise her knee up into his gut.

He spits and hacks and asks _Are you satisfied yet_ and she brushes her thumb across the scar on his cheek.

“Don’t you have more service to give me?” She asks and he sinks to his knees in front of her.


End file.
